Pulp | Arts Around Ann Arbor

An outstanding criminologist living in this area may be asked to enter the investigation of the murder of six young women found slain in the past 23 months.

Officers from five police agencies have found themselves stymied in the probe of the murder last Sunday of U-M Coed Alice E. Kalom and virtually without clues to the slaying of five other young women.

Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter E. Krasny says his department is considering the possibility of contacting the local criminologist who is considered a nationwide expert in his field.

Krasny’s department has jurisdiction in two of the six murders . . . Joan E. Schell, 20-year-old Eastern Michigan University coed, and Maralynn Skelton, 16-year-old high school dropout from Romulus.

“It’s apparent we need a new, fresh look at the crimes,” Krasny says. “It’s possible that a trained, competent criminologist can, through his experience and training, give us a new approach. I’m certainly willing to try it.”

The city police chief says he intends to confer with Prosecuting Attorney William F. Delhey and Sheriff Douglas J. Harvey about inviting the criminologist into the cases.

Meanwhile, the Kalom investigation, which at one point had shown some progress for police, has ground to a virtual halt with only a handful of leads, which are vague at best, showing promise.

Sheriff Harvey said both Undersheriff Harold J. Owings Jr. and Detective Lt. Stanton L. Bordine have taken out-of-county trips in the past two days to run down leads on the Kalom slaying. He said it would be “premature” at this time to voice an opinion on evidence the trips may have unearthed.

“We’re checking everything out no matter if it involves a five-block ride or a 500-mile trip,” Harvey said. “At this point we can’t afford to brush off anything.”

The sheriff said his detectives are handling all telephoned tips on a 24-hour-a-day schedule, using the printed “tip sheets” provided all agencies two months ago by Prosecuting Attorney William F. Delhey. He said his uniformed patrol is continuing to roll through back roads and lover’s lanes, taking down license numbers, obtaining names and addresses of persons they find in these areas.

Harvey sent four detectives to this morning’s funeral for Miss Kalom held at 11 a.m. in Kalamazoo. He called such a procedure “standard” in such a case.

The theory in his department on the slaying of the attractive coed now includes a belief that she was falling or had fallen when she received the fatal bullet in the top of her head.

The .22 caliber slug lodged in her skull from such an angle that a person firing the gun would have had to hold his hand in an extremely awkward and unnatural position to pull the trigger had his victim not been falling or ducking at the time, detectives say.

It was also learned that a bruise above one of Miss Kalom’s eyes may have been caused by a bullet which creased but did not enter her forehead. If this is true, it means the killer fired at least twice at his victim.

The sheath knife which sheriff’s men received two days ago from the murder scene on Earhart Rd. near a gravel pit entrance south of Joy Rd. may have ben dropped by a hiker passing the area, officers reported.

The knife, at first thought to be the weapon which Miss Kalom was stabbed and multilated, is new and had no signs of blood on it. It is being processed by the State Police Crime Laboratory in Plymouth.

Chief Krasny says his men are still attempting to place Miss Kalom away from or leaving the last Sunday. He said that is the last time she has positively been identified as being in the rock band rehearsal hall.

The chief noted that two hours before that time, a squad of his men was called to the Depot House to investigate a complaint of a man choking a young woman.

He said the man was ordered away from the woman who later agreed to sign a criminal complaint against him. The case is pending.

It was at that time that the officers saw Miss Kalom in the budding, Chief Krasny said.

The chief said his department is still holding $7,500 in cash which can be used in small amounts to pay tipsters providing key information in any of the six murder cases.

“City Council has directed this money can be used with more latitude than a straight reward offer for the arrest and conviction of the killer,” Krasny pointed out. “We don’t have to have an arrest and conviction for the money to be dispensed. We can use it for small pieces of information."

In addition to the Police Department fund, which may be increased later by the City Council, there now exists rewards totaling more than $25,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.

Both Krasny and Harvey urged citizens who see any suspicious activity involving a man attempting to pick up young girls to copy down a license number and call the nereast police agency.

“If ever there were a time for people to get inlvolved, now is it,” Sheriff Harvey said. “We are much in need of public cooperation at this point.”

The police chief said he has taken six more men from his Uniformed Division and moved them into the Detective Bureau to work on the murder cases. Harvey has also transferred road patrol deputies into plainclothes and State Police detectives from a half-dozen posts throughout southern Michigan have been reassigned to this area for the probe.

The six murder cases are equally divided between the Ann Arbor city police, the Sheriff’s Department and the State Police. Jurisdiction in any criminal case is determined by its geographic location in connection with city limits and county area.

State Police are empowered to pursue criminal cases anywhere outside the physical limits of a community with sheriff’s deputies normally operating under the same arrangement.

A constitutional question has been raised over a legislative proposal to offer a $10,000 state reward for information leading to the conviction of “the Ann Arbor killer.”

Reps. Thomas Guastello, D-Utica, and Edward Geerlings, R-Muskegon, introduced the resolution proposing the reward in an effort to “solve an extraordinary series of savage killings.”

The reward resolution was referred to the House Appropriations Committee, where chairman William Copeland, D-Wyandotte, questioned its constitionality.

“I think there’s something in law that says the Legislature can’t do this,” explained Copeland, who asked Atty. Gen. Frank Kelley for a ruling on the question.

Deputy Atty, Gen. Leon Cohan said an answer was expected “early next week.”

Guastello said he saw “no constitutional prohibition to this type of reward. The state has a responsibility to protect these young women,” he said. “We should do everything in our power to find the killer or killers.”